


The Truth Will Out

by katling



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Shifters, But What's New There, Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Justin Hammer is a dick, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Steve Friendly, Sort Of, This was meant to be a bit silly and funny, Zemo will complete his plans come hell or high water, but instead it turned angsty, moderate due to trolls, not team Cap friendly, sorry about that, with Tony cheering on badass Rhodey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 10:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17937872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katling/pseuds/katling
Summary: Helmut Zemo's original plans were stymied by Tony's big reveal at the Leipzig airport. But he will have his way, no matter what. Because no matter how you try to hide it, the truth will always come out.This is a continuation of my Shifter verse fic,Enough Is Enough, and will make more sense if you read that first.Written for the Tony Stark Bingo 2019 - Square S1: Captivity





	The Truth Will Out

In hindsight, Tony knew he should have expected it. People had been trying (and often succeeding) in kidnapping him for years when he was just Tony Stark, ordinary rich person and kind of secret, unconfirmed Shifter. He probably shouldn’t have been surprised that those attempts would increase once he confirmed that he was a Shifter and revealed what his shifted formed was. In his defence, the kidnapping attempts had actually decreased after he’d become Iron Man. He suspected it had been a combination of wariness about what he could do with the armour and that getting involved with the Avengers meant his accessibility wasn’t what it had once been.

This lot had snatched him up off the street after a board meeting that he hadn’t been able to ditch, mostly because it had been about possible impacts his Shifter confirmation might have on the company. (Mostly thus far, it had been positive, especially in Europe. There was some negativity in areas where Shifters were viewed with more suspicion but the overall trend was good.) The meeting had been interminable and tedious and after it was finally done, Tony had decided he wanted real coffee from the little hole in the place around the corner from Stark Tower rather than anything he could get in the building. And if he also wanted a bit of fresh air after being stuck in the board room for hours, that was his own business.

But they’d grabbed him off the street when he’d been wearing nothing other than a very expensive Armani suit. He had his gauntlet watch but he didn’t want to give away the game until he was sure he could escape. They’d stripped him of his sunglasses and phone but hadn’t bother searching him beyond that. He wasn’t sure if they were very confident of their ability to hold onto him or whether they really were that dumb. He was inclined to lean towards the latter because, really, who in their right mind would annoy a dragon.

Not that he could shift right now, which maybe tilted them back into the smart category. He was in the back of a van, sure (also very cliché, one day he’d like to be kidnapped in a stretch limo… which when you really thought about it would be less suspicious. Anyone sees Tony Stark waving frantically from a non-descript van, they’re going to get suspicious. Tony Stark waving from a limo though? Just another day in the life of a rich billionaire, right?), but he was also in a cage. Which… kinky but not the point. The cage was made of a metal that gleamed strangely and he’d already been warned that he wouldn’t be able to shift without crushing himself. His lack of ability to immediately identify the metal made him wary about trying it. There was no point anyway. He still had his watch and unless the cage and the van blocked the signal, which he knew wasn’t true by the occasional subtle vibration from the watch, then FRIDAY was already tracking him. Which means these clowns had an angry bear on their tail right now… which kind of slid them back into the dumb category, since what idiot didn’t know that a) Rhodey would always come for him, b) Rhodey was a bear Shifter and c) Rhodey was Tony’s protective brother bear. 

(Mama Rhodes, on the other hand, was Tony’s protective Mama bear. Rhodey got his shift form honestly after all. All the Rhodes kids were bear Shifters like their Mama, much to the amused complaints of their eagle Shifter father. Then again, Rhodey _had_ gone into the Air Force so he combined the best of both parents, even if he was the butt of the occasional flying bear joke. But the point was… at least it was only his Rhodey bear coming after them. Heaven help them if someone let Mama Rhodes loose. Now there was a bear you didn’t want coming after you in anger.)

So, for now, Tony was content to sit back and pretend to be cowed and obedient while he examined the metal of the cage. He had a strong suspicion it might be vibranium, which raised some very interesting questions that he might need to ask a certain king about later on. He was pretty sure these clowns had nothing to do with Wakanda though, mostly because they were white but partly because Wakanda had no need to kidnap him. They could just ask him nicely and he’d be happy to talk to them. Once T’Challa had gotten over his poorly placed desire to kill Barnes, he’d turned out to be a very interesting person to talk to. 

T’Challa was, however, going to be a little peeved if this was vibranium though. Not that it was necessarily stolen from Wakanda but the Wakandans in general had some very firm views about what vibranium should and shouldn’t be used for and a tendency to summarily confiscate it from people they felt wouldn’t do the right things with it, whether it had been stolen from Wakanda or sourced from the disparate chunks that had littered the earth after the meteor fell. Tony had been both dubious and curious about that attitude until T’Challa had explained that Wakanda had not been without its internal ructions from time to time during their isolation and they knew better than anyone else that while vibranium could do a great deal that was good, it could equally as well do things that were bad in the same measure. Tony had shuddered and indicated his understanding. In much the same way that Tony had felt a moral obligation to deal with the weapons that had been misappropriated from his company even though he hadn’t been the one directly responsible for it, Wakandans felt responsible for ensuring that vibranium didn’t become a source of horror and terror instead of a source of hope and peaceful advancement.

The van suddenly thumped and bumped its way over something and came to halt. Tony heard the sound of warehouse doors closing then the doors at the back of the van opened to reveal a smiling, smarmy face that made Tony sigh and roll his eyes.

“They actually let you out of prison?”

Justin Hammer smirked. “I gave them some very valuable information and they offered me early parole.”

“So you were a prison snitch. Why am I not surprised?” Tony said dryly as he settled himself more comfortably in the cage. Now that he knew who had kidnapped him, he could safely place them in the category of idiots and wait for rescue. Rhodey liked rescuing him.

He changed his mind again when a second man stepped into view behind Hammer. One whom Tony had never met but who had been identified as the person who had triggered Barnes in Berlin. “Good afternoon, Dr Stark,” Helmut Zemo said with a polite nod of his head. “I do apologise for the inconvenience. My plans were somewhat stymied by your actions at the Leipzig/Halle airport and I intend to see them fulfilled.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Your plans? Huh. So you’re the one responsible for the Vienna bombing.”

“I am,” Zemo said calmly, inclining his head slightly. “Please pass on my condolences to King T’Challa. Unfortunately, bombs are imprecise weapons at best and while I hoped that no one would die, it could not be helped.”

Tony decided to leave most of that alone. Zemo was clearly hellbent on something and it had driven him over the edge. He wasn’t going to listen to reason so Tony wasn’t going to waste his breath.

“Well,” he said with an almost flippant air. “Whatever you’re planning had better be quick because my honey bear is already on his way and that’s not going to go well for anyone other than me.”

He almost grinned when Hammer and his flunkies all paled and glanced furtively over their shoulders. However, Zemo was seemingly unmoved and that worried Tony just a little.

“This won’t take long,” Zemo said then he stepped back and nodded to Hammer.

There was only a little hesitation on Hammer’s part before he ordered his men to pull the cage out of the van and carry it over to the other side of the warehouse, where there was a TV set up next to a laptop. Tony was careful to keep his expression to one of boredom even as he tried to figure what the hell Zemo was up to.

The man himself walked over to the laptop. “I took the liberty of digitising the video, though it was of remarkably good quality for something filmed in 1991.”

A chill went down Tony’s spine. 1991 had been a year that started out pretty well before turning into a shitshow at the end and Zemo’s mention of it was particularly ominous. Before he had a chance to come up with something flippant, Zemo pressed a key on the laptop and stepped away. 

Tony’s attention was immediately caught by the hauntingly familiar vision. “I know that road,” he murmured.

He watched with growing horror and numbness as an equally familiar car came into view and promptly had its tyres shot out. He recognised it. It was something he’d seen before during demonstrations of certain types of SI weaponry and ammunition designed to shoot out reinforced tires of enemy vehicles. So he certainly recognised the tyres of his parents’ car being shot out as the cause for the crash instead of what he’d been told at the time – that his father had been drunk and lost control.

He watched as his father was thrown free of the car while his mother remain trapped inside. He watched as a man on a motorcycle drove up and his father begged the man to help his wife. He watched as his father recognised the man, named him. He watched as the man, now recognisable as Barnes, bashed his father’s face in and then walked implacably around to the other side of the car and strangled his mother. He watched as Barnes shot out the camera and the laptop screen went dark.

He was breathing heavily by then, shock taking its toll, and he barely noticed Zemo walk back over and tap on a few more keys on the laptop. “I am truly sorry, Dr Stark,” the man murmured as he walked away again.

This time the video was in pure, modern high definition and showed Rogers and Romanov clear as day. The audio quality was good as well and it didn’t take long to realise that Romanov was handing over a folder full of information on the Winter Soldier. The time and date stamp on the video was damning. They’d known. They’d both known since the fall of SHIELD and said nothing. Rogers had even given that insulting, patronising speech about not keeping secrets all while he was holding onto this information.

Tony didn’t know when the video finished, when the laptop screen went blank and when Rhodey had arrived. He was too busy staring into nothing… or rather into the horror of the truth that had been kept from him… to notice. It was only when Rhodey crouched in front of him and unlocked the cage that he came back to himself.

“R… Rhodey,” he gasped, his voice hoarse and filled with pain.

“Tones?” Rhodey was there, pulling him out and not even questioning it when Tony clung onto him and refused to let go. “What’s wrong?”

Tony didn’t know how to answer, didn’t know how to articulate what he’d just seen. Finally he managed just one word, “Laptop.”

“Happy, get that laptop and let FRIDAY at it,” Rhodey barked as he lifted Tony as easily as he once had when they’d been in college. He turned his attention back to Tony. “Tones? Who was here? Who grabbed you?”

“Hammer. Helmut Zemo,” Tony managed before he buried his face in Rhodey’s shoulder and let himself shake and shiver as the emotions of the day washed over him. Rhodey was here and he was safe. He could do this, he could let go and break down and later he knew that Rhodey would come with him out to the empty stretch of land he’d bought in Arizona and be with him as he let the dragon rage and burn whatever he could find.

And then, when the storm had passed, certain people were going to find out what happens when Tony Stark decided that it was time for all hell to break loose.

**Author's Note:**

> Just to anticipate a question - I'm taking a small diversion here with Bucky - he didn't tell them about the Starks because in this AU, he hasn't remembered it yet. It's there buried deep in his mind and if things had continued on as per canon and he'd seen the video, he would have remembered everything about it. But because things got short circuited at the airport, he's kind of subconsciously semi-aware that he did it (if you get what I mean) but you could say that his memory hasn't been jogged by anything to actually truly remember it yet.
> 
> Also, yes, Zemo (and Hammer and his minions) all left while Tony was watching the second video because Zemo wasn't stupid enough to wait around for an angry bear to arrive and he thinks he may still have some use for Hammer. The key to the cage was left lying conspicuously nearby, close enough that Tony could have reached it if he wasn't in shock and certainly obvious enough to Rhodey bear when he arrived. Zemo never intended to hold Tony for ransom or anything like that. He just wanted Tony to see the videos.


End file.
